Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, July 06, 2025

The Fallacy of False Binaries: A Jewish Challenge to Western Philosophy

There are two kinds of people: those who think that there are two kinds of people and those who don't.

This old joke cuts surprisingly deep. It gets at something I’ve come to believe is a fundamental flaw in Western philosophy: a near-pathological obsession with binaries.

I was thinking a bit further about determinacy - the idea that moral principles and legal rules provide clear, definitive guidance for specific situations or not. This has been debated in philosophical circles since Aristotle and the Jewish ethics framework I have been building seems to lean more towards determinacy for halacha, and indeterminacy for ethics.

But as I was thinking about it, I realized that this is a false binary. There is a third category - determinacy with principled exceptions.

Consider traffic lights. There is a rule to stop at a red light. But that rule does not apply to emergency vehicles . This doesn't make the rule indeterminate - it is still determinate but it builds within its own system the flexibility to handle exceptions. The rule hasn’t collapsed into chaos; it simply includes a structured override.

Or think about corporate policy. A large company may have thousands of policies - but it also has a documented exception process. Those exceptions don’t mean the rules are meaningless. It means the system anticipates edge cases and knows how to handle them without abandoning structure.

Biology gives another example. Most people are biologically male or female. A small percentage have chromosomal variations like XXY or XYY. Acknowledging that doesn’t destroy the sex binary - it refines it. Medical professionals must account for exceptions without discarding the fundamental pattern, or they risk misdiagnosing everyone.

Once I realized this, I noticed that modern philosophy assumes many other binaries besides determinacy/indeterminacy that Jewish thinking never accepted.

Reason vs. Emotion
Objective vs. Subjective
Universal vs. Particular
Individual vs. Collective
Free Will vs. Determinism
Nature vs. Nurture
Fact vs. Value
Sacred vs. Secular
Theory vs. Practice
Mind vs. Body

Jewish thought doesn’t treat these as oppositions. It embraces both poles, not as contradictions, but as dynamic tensions. We balance din and rachamim, emet and shalom, legal rigor and human dignity. We elevate the mundane into the sacred, treat personality as real but not determinative, and accept practical wisdom as part of truth-seeking. These are not binaries to be resolved, but values to be integrated.

The Western binary instinct traces back to the Greeks. Plato built his metaphysics on dualisms: body vs. soul, appearance vs. reality, ideal vs. material. Aristotle added formal logic: every proposition is either true or false. The Enlightenment doubled down, hardcoding binary opposition into moral theory, political frameworks, and scientific method.

Not all Western philosophy falls into this binary trap. Hegel’s dialectic tried to move beyond opposites through synthesis; William James and John Dewey emphasized context and experience over rigid categories; and postmodern thinkers like Derrida and Foucault exposed binary assumptions, but usually without offering a constructive framework in their place.

So my critique isn’t aimed at every philosopher. It’s aimed at the broader binary instinct that runs through much of Western thought - the default habit of dividing the world into opposing categories, even when reality is more layered, dynamic, and integrated.

But Judaism was not built on those foundations. The Torah doesn’t pretend that justice is abstract or perfect. The Talmud doesn’t insist that every argument has a winner. Jewish law is not a closed system of binaries: it’s a living framework of tensions, values, and override mechanisms. And while it strives for coherence, it never demands false simplicity

I had subconsciously included this in the logic of my AskHillel chatbot, telling it not to accept false binaries in questions people ask but to look actively for compromises or creative solutions. But this rejection of binary thinking can be seen throughout Judaism. And even halacha, which appears to many to be the most rigid of Jewish structures, often answers questions with "it depends" or "technically legal but discouraged."

It isn't only Judaism. Eastern philosophies, to my understanding, also never accepted this binary thinking as normative. Buddhism appears to reject dualities of self/other and mind/body. In Chinese philosophy, yin and yang are opposites that integrate with each other.

In real life, we also see that people rarely act as if these binaries are real. Mind and body are experienced as one. Nature and nurture co-produce who we are. No one is purely objective: two reasonable people with the exact same facts can and do come up with different conclusions.

Once you recognize the fallacy of false binaries, it is hard to unsee it.

Part of my original motivation in building AskHillel was defensive. I pictured Jewish students walking into college philosophy or social theory classes, overwhelmed by ideologies like Marxism, decolonialism, or radical social justice - many of which rely on binary framings of oppressor vs. oppressed, power vs. morality, structure vs. freedom. I wanted to give those students an older, deeper system of moral reasoning - one grounded in complexity, responsibility, and integrity, which they could use as a yardstick to compare these modern philosophies with.

But now I see it goes deeper. It’s not just that modern ideologies are wrong. It’s that much of Western philosophy itself is structured around flawed categories. Not because the thinkers were foolish, but because their premises were wrong. They began with binary distinctions that do not reflect how human life, ethics, or law actually work. And the more they refined their systems, the more elegantly they trapped themselves in an artificial frame.

Jewish thought - and perhaps other non-Western systems too - never accepted the premise that truth lies in either/or. We’ve been living, arguing, and refining within structured tensions for thousands of years. It may not be as clean. But it’s far more real.

And once you see that, everything changes.

For argument's sake, let's take Israel haters at their word that they have no problem with Jews, only Zionists.

So some buy who calls himself "Bobby Vylan" leads a large crowd in a chant. broadcast on live TV, "Death to the IDF!"

No problem, right? He's not calling or death to Jews, so it is OK, right?

And then, a few days later, this happens in Melbourne:

A group of anti-Israeli protesters have terrorised shocked diners by storming a restaurant in Melbourne's CBD - as an arsonist targeted a nearby synagogue.

The chaotic scenes unfolded at the Israeli-owned Miznon eatery on Hardware Lane, where up to 20 protesters hurled chairs, food, and glassware at the venue while chanting 'Death to the IDF (Israel Defence Forces)'.

Footage shared online showed the breakaway group throwing traffic bollards by passing cars and yelling expletives on their way to the restaurant after a separate protest involving 80 pro-Palestine in nearby Swanston Street.

When the masked protesters arrived at Miznon, diners can be heard screaming as furniture and tables are overturned.

"Death to the IDF" was not exactly a common chant heard at protests before last week.

And now it is used to attack diners at an Israeli owned restaurant.

No Chinese restaurants were attacked this way during Tiananmen Square. No Palestinian restaurants were attacked after October 7. No, somehow, only Israelis, Israeli food, Israeli people (but only Israeli Jews) are allowed to be attacked because they are "Israeli."

And at the same time, in the same city, a synagogue was firebombed while people were inside. Must be coincidence, right?

Unhinged hate of "Zionists" is unhinged hate for 90% of Jews. The motivations, conspiracy thinking, and crazed justifications for attacks are identical. It is no more moral than when the Soviet Union claimed they were only targeting "rootless cosmopolitans."

The excuse that they aren't antisemitic is not just disingenuous - it is an excuse to violently attack whoever they define as "Zionists." And in the end, even according to their own twisted logic, "anti-Zionism" is just as evil and violent as old fashioned antisemitism.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

An illustration of how prevalent honor/shame is in Iranian media

Here is the current Tehran Times English language homepage. I color coded articles as to whether they are meant to honor Iran or shame Iran's enemies.

There was no third category.

In fact, every article on that page is meant to either praise Iran (and Iranian leaders) or insult Israel/the West.

Even the sports and culture sections!

In other words, it is pure propaganda.

By contrast, here is the home page of YNet, Yediot Aharonot's English site.

You can argue with some categorizations, but the articles are either self-critical of Israel, somewhat proud, or straight news/analysis.

None of them is trying to shame Iran (or Hamas, for that matter.)

This is the difference between Israel and its neighbors in a nutshell.

Israel is self-critical, cares about the truth, and Israeli media are independent and won't become sycophantic.

Iran is deathly afraid of any news that could shame it, and shaming its enemies is an equally high priority to self-aggrandizement - with no room for, you know, news.

If you don't understand the honor/shame mentality, you cannot begin to understand the Middle East. And too many Western analysts and "experts" simply either think that everyone has a Western mindset - or they themselves have adopted the honor/shame mindset in their own analysis.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Hezbollah chief Sheikh Naim Qassem said last week, "We will not allow anyone to threaten us for concessions, because we will never relinquish our rights, nor will we ever agree to surrender our weapons to the Zionist enemy."

Of course, no one is asking them to give their weapons to Israel, just to give up their weapons. A year ago this request was unthinkable but now the government of Lebanon is insisting.

Hezbollah's justification for having a separate army used to be that it was to dissuade Israel from attacking. After the war, however, the Lebanese are no longer believing it - since if there was no Hezbollah shooting at Israel, Israel would not have attacked any part of Lebanon.

Hezbollah needs to find another justification for existing. So it made one up, starting rumors that a resurgent ISIS is threatening Lebanon and Hezbollah is the only force that can stop them.

A small group named Saraya Ansar al-Sunna popped up in Lebanon this year, coincidentally shortly after Hezbollah's defeat, and now Hezbollah is using it to stoke fear in Lebanon. L'Orient Today quotes analysts who are skeptical:

In circles opposed to Hezbollah, there is a belief that the reported resurgence of Islamist terrorism is exaggerated and intended to create a climate of fear. A military strategist and former army officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, described it as a new "maneuver" by Hezbollah, which is facing mounting local and international pressure to relinquish its weapons. "It's a farce entirely staged by Hezbollah," he said.

Several anti-Hezbollah analysts from Tripoli said they have never heard of this group before and believe it is likely "manipulated by Iranian agents or former officers of Bashar al-Assad's former regime."

On Wednesday, Akkar MP Walid Baarini (Sunni) suspected a possible "plan to justify keeping Hezbollah's weapons under the pretext of combating terrorism." He added, "What is being said about the entry of foreign groups into Lebanon is a major exaggeration."

Hezbollah is floundering.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

07/05 Links: Inside the ugly relationship between Islamism and the Left; Man charged over arson attack on Melbourne synagogue; Hamas grenade attack on GHF aid workers

From Ian:

Inside the ugly relationship between Islamism and the Left

Fifty years ago, much of the far-Left was inspired by the Soviet Union’s Middle East propaganda, a pro-Islamist stance in response to US and European support for Israel. That influenced Left-wing groups in the UK – such as the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Revolutionary Communist Group – who identified Arabs as oppressed, while Israel, then as now, was seen as an illegitimate “white” state. But the far-Left remains a politically insignificant force on its own. Part of the motivation for an alliance with Islamism is to harness the power of others for their own ends – which, of course, works both ways.

This is neatly illustrated in a 1994 article by Chris Harman of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) for International Socialism, “The Prophet and the Proletariat”, which advocated for a pragmatic working relationship between Islamists and revolutionary socialists. Harman is open about the areas of opposition between the two groups – over the role of women, for example – but concludes: “On some issues we will find ourselves on the same side as the Islamists against imperialism and the state… It should be true in countries like France or Britain... Where the Islamists are in opposition, our rule should be, ‘with the Islamists sometimes, with the state never’.”

In Britain, where Islamism only speaks for a fraction of the country’s Muslims, the Labour party remained a natural home for many Muslim voters up to Tony Blair’s premiership. “To put it crudely, community leaders were able to ‘deliver’ votes for Labour from within those communities in certain areas such as Birmingham or Bradford,” says Timothy Peace, a senior lecturer in politics and international relations at the University of Glasgow. “From the 1980s, Muslims themselves began to enter local councils, but the closeness with Labour continued up to the late 1990s.”

This began to break down thanks to the wars in Iraq (2003-2011) and Afghanistan (2001-2021). The establishment of the Stop The War Coalition (STWC) in 2001 was a milestone which provided Corbyn and other prominent Leftists with a forum to connect with groups such as the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB).

Last year, the then Communities Secretary, Michael Gove, alleged in Parliament that the MAB, together with Mend and Cage, which campaigns against counter-terror measures, “give rise to concern for their Islamist orientation and views”. All three groups rejected the label, with Mend’s chief executive Azhar Qayum saying his organisation was “not at all” extremist, Cage pledging to “explore all avenues, including legal” to challenge the “government’s deep dive into authoritarianism”, and the MAB accusing Gove of a “blatant effort to stifle dissenting voices”.

Britain’s action in Iraq and elsewhere gave overtly Islamist groups an opportunity to tap into the concept of the “Ummah” – the worldwide Islamic community. Shawcross’s review warned that key Islamist narratives included, “commanding that [their interpretation of] the Islamic faith is placed at the centre of an individual’s identity, and must govern all social and political decision-making”.

At the same time, a definition of Islamophobia proposed by some MPs and backed by bodies such as Mend and the MAB would prohibit anyone from “accusing Muslim citizens of being more loyal to the ‘Ummah’… than to the interests of their own nations”, raising concerns about potential limits on freedom of speech.

“The MAB were tied to political Islam and found inspiration from the Muslim Brotherhood, a powerful organisation in Arab countries,” says Peace. “The MAB were one of the key organisations in Stop the War, even though they were not very big at the time it began. The driving force were the Socialist Workers Party, and they managed to mobilise large numbers of Muslim protesters, and that overruled any ideological divisions between the two groups.”

The MAB has said it is “a British organisation operating entirely within the British Isles, with no presence elsewhere. It is not an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood nor a member”.

Britain’s new Islamo-Leftist alliance won’t last, but it might kill Labour first

In Muslim-majority democracies, the Left tends to be secular. The more religious parties, on top of being socially conservative, are the more prone to cut taxes and reduce regulations.

This should not surprise us, for Islam is the only great religion founded by a businessman – a businessman who used his last sermon to preach the sanctity of property. Jesus said some hard things about wealth, and it was not until the sixteenth century that Christians stopped holding up poverty as their ideal. But Islam never had any problem with the idea that money, honestly acquired and put to good use, was a blessing. The Prophet, after all, had established tax-free markets and rejected calls for prices to be regulated.

Across the Islamic wold, from Morocco to Malaysia, anti-Western feeling is stronger on the secular Left. But in Britain, Muslims were for a long time seen primarily, not as people who believed in the Oneness of God and the finality of the teachings of Mohammad, but as a non-white minority to be slotted into a victim role in an imagined hierarchy of oppression. That is why British Islamo-gauchism rests on anti-colonialism, and especially on the portrayal of Israel as the ultimate colonial oppressor.

George Galloway understood earlier than most how the balance was shifting. Having once won awards from Stonewall, he began to describe himself as “socially conservative”, made sceptical noises about the portrayal of gay relationships and came out against abortion and euthanasia, while at the same time growing a beard, boasting that he did not drink and littering his speech with Islamic expressions.

A challenger party that aims to get into double figures will, I suspect, lean more to Galloway’s approach than Corbyn’s. Which makes me wonder how many revolutionary socialists will go along with it.

Let me suggest an early test. In Apsana Begum’s Poplar and Limehouse constituency, 39 per cent of residents identify as Muslim and 24 per cent as Christian. If she is the next Labour MP to defect, it will tell us much about the likely orientation of the new party.

The Red-Green coalition, which came together in the hideous mésalliance known as Stop the War, might hold for a bit longer. But, in time, omnicause Lefties will be squeezed out – though not, one assumes, thrown off buildings like their Iranian colleagues.

The face of Britain is changing, and our parties are changing with it. Some Corbynites may live long enough to wonder, whether, in getting rid of something they disliked, they ended up enabling something worse.

‘Exasperated’ minister asked BBC why nobody was fired for airing Gaza documentary

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has said she asked the BBC why nobody has been fired for airing a Gaza documentary which featured the son of a Hamas official.

This comes ahead of a review looking into Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone, which is reportedly set to be published next week.

The programme first aired in February until it was pulled by the broadcaster after it emerged that its 13-year old narrator is the son of a Hamas official.

The review is being led by Peter Johnston, the director of editorial complaints and reviews which is independent of BBC News and reports directly to the director-general.

It is expected to determine whether any editorial guidelines were broken, and whether any disciplinary action is needed.

The BBC will also undertake a full audit of expenditure on the programme.

Speaking to The Times, Ms Nandy described feeling “exasperated” as she called for an “adequate explanation from the BBC about what has happened”.

“I have not had that from the chair or director-general yet,” she said.

She added: “I have been very clear that people must be held accountable for the decisions that were taken. I have asked the question to the board (of the BBC). Why has nobody been fired?

“What I want is an explanation as to why not. If it is a sackable offence then obviously that should happen.

“But if the BBC, which is independent, considers that it is not, I think what all parliamentarians want to know is why.”

On Alan Rusbridger: champion of an ethical press

It is no surprise that advocates for either side in the Middle East conflict try to influence the media; what is offensive is the idea promoted by Byrne and Rusbridger that pro-Israel propaganda is exceptionally nasty, illegitimate and based on falsity. Rusbridger’s contention is that pro-Palestinian propaganda, backed by an Arabia with a population 45 times larger than Israel, and by a Muslim bloc 200 times larger, and by the massed ranks of the academic Humanities, and by the political Left, and much of the Church, is innocent, truthful and reliable, albeit pushed by a weaker agent that is somehow incapable of organising or projecting its voice, and which the mainstream media is predetermined to resist.

Rusbridger’s message about shady pro-Israeli influence grows directly out of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and Henry Ford’s The International Jew, and Nazi propaganda, and the conspiracy literature of David Duke and others. It is a horrific example of the Left’s alliance with what would once have been regarded as the Left’s polar opposite. It might be capable of being explained but it is not obvious how it can be challenged. As Rusbridger says of the media he represents, “narratives are constructed and take root. And when someone comes along with a counter-narrative they are ignored. It would be unkind to call it groupthink but there is, at the very least, a lack of balance.”

There is a postscript to all of this. Having looked at Alan Rusbridger’s unedifying contribution to Prospect in its issue of two weeks ago, I have now received the following teaser for his triumphs in this week’s issue:
“As … Alan Rusbridger and his co-host Lionel Barber discuss on today’s episode of Media Confidential, there clearly was a procedural mishap [over the BBC’s coverage of Glastonbury]. Why wasn’t someone ready to press the mute button? But as Alan writes in his latest column, the furore over the incident is something of a “dead cat”—a story intended to distract from thornier questions. Such questions include: why did the BBC drop a documentary on doctors in Gaza, which aired last night on Channel Four? And did Robbie Gibb, the staunchly pro-Israel former Tory spin doctor who sits on the BBC’s editorial committee, have any say in it? Is his position tenable?”

I find this terribly disappointing. For no obvious reason, except perhaps that we attended the same Oxbridge college at the same time, I had always given Rusbridger the benefit of the doubt. Admittedly, The Guardian has slid off the scale in terms of the divisiveness of its editorial and political agenda, but I had allowed myself to feel that this had happened under him rather than because of him. I wanted to think, also, that whether or not I agreed with Leftist journalism, it was respectably constructed, evidence-based and factual, even if it used the tools of journalism to come to different conclusions from me, just as opposing lawyers might use the same tools of the law.

A closer look at Rusbridger’s writings now shows me how wrong I have been. Many of the characteristics I had associated with the gutter journalism of the rightwing press are evidenced here as well: slurs, innuendo, inconsistency, irrelevancy, false logic, guilt by association, name dropping, appeals to authority, reliance on endorsements, absence of argumentation, lack of necessary data, the invitation to take unsafe assertions on trust, and much else. I had not previously assumed that Rusbridger’s writing was cheap or that it stooped in this way; now I know. And as the scales fall away from my eyes, what I conclude is that it deserves to be studied by every media department in the country, because it’s a reversal of all the taught clichés about what distinguishes the fine journalism of the Left from the bought journalism of the Right. Very sad.

07/04 Links Pt2: Despite the surge of antisemitism, America is worth fighting for; Murray: Will NYC fall for the selfie-entitled Zohran Mamdani?; The Case of Dr. Benjamin Bross

From Ian:

Jonathan S. Tobin: Despite the surge of antisemitism, America is worth fighting for

President Donald Trump’s campaign to punish the universities that have tolerated and even encouraged antisemitism since Oct. 7 is evidence that Jews have powerful allies, even if some in the Jewish community are so immersed in the hyper-partisan spirit of the times that they refuse to recognize it. Indeed, in much of the country outside of the deep blue coastal enclaves where most Jews continue to live, the reaction to the uptick of hated and rise of radicals like Mamdani is the sort of disgust and outrage that should reassure the Jewish community that talk of giving up on America is as wrongheaded as it is counterproductive.

If nothing else, the U.S. and Israeli military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities that posed an existential threat of another Holocaust are evidence that America is not a lost cause.

So, as much as it may seem tempting or even rational to talk of abandoning America, that would be a terrible mistake. Though Israel and Zionism still represent the Jewish future in a way that America cannot, Jews cannot give up on this country and certainly shouldn’t even think of doing so without a fight.

We must do so not merely out of a desire to defend our lives here but because a strong America that has not abandoned the best of Western civilization and values is essential to the worldwide struggle against the forces of tyranny—both Marxist and Islamist—that threaten Israel and Jews everywhere.

If Jewish life is unsafe in America, then it will be unsafe everywhere. That’s why it is essential that, rather than giving up or giving in to hysterical talk about the end of liberty and even the end of Jewry in the States, we must recommit to the fight to roll back the woke tide and defeat it.

This may be a generational struggle in much the same way that leftist efforts to impose these false beliefs on America were. Yet it is a battle that is necessary not just to save American Jewry, but to save the canon of Western civilization on which our freedoms rest.

The quintessential American response
A year from now, this nation will attempt to celebrate the 250th anniversary of its independence, and the battle over how to commemorate it has already begun. The contempt for traditional patriotism and belief in the truth that the American republic, flawed though it might be, is a force for good in the world has already been made clear by left-wing elites. As discouraging as this discourse may be, it is a reminder that the stigmatizing and targeting of Jews is part and parcel of the same struggle other citizens are engaging in. The American republic is and has always been exceptional. But it will only remain that way so long as a broad cross-section of Americans—Jews and non-Jews, liberals and conservatives, Democrats as well as Republicans—are willing to stand up against the woke forces seeking to traduce its founding values.

The appropriate answer to attacks on Jews is not flight or a call to shelter in place. The appropriate response is for Jews to speak up and not abandon the streets to antisemites and woke mobs. The rejoinder to anti-Jewish violence is for Jews to act in the most quintessential American way possible: to arm themselves (verbally, legally and literally) and make it clear that they will not be intimidated or silenced.

Those who hate the founding principles of the United States are wrong about the end of American greatness or the need to transform it into some pale reflection of Marxist or Islamist concepts. And so, on this Independence Day, rather than writing off America, we should be embracing it all the more enthusiastically—and pledging to defend it against those who wish to tear it down.

Cary Nelson and Richard Ross: The Case of Dr. Benjamin Bross

Ever since some faculty members exulted over Hamas’s October 7, 2023, murder spree in Israel and then campus encampments began chanting for Zionists to be cast out of the community, we have worried that we would also soon see a quiet, determined campaign to deny tenure to qualified Zionist faculty. The encampments were notable for their noise. The determined assault on pro-Israel faculty would be barely audible, carried out by confidential committees and cloaked in self-righteous if deeply compromised professionalism. We have faced exactly that in our own community, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

As members of the executive committee of Faculty for Academic Freedom and Against Antisemitism, we offer this essay as a warning that it will spread worldwide.

The problem arises when radical anti-Zionists serve on tenure committees that are reviewing expressly Zionist candidates for tenure. When the faculty in both categories are known to hold those opposing beliefs, there is an obvious suggestion of bias and a clear appearance of a conflict of interest. It doesn’t matter how fair and impartial the compromised committee members may be. In the principle that governs both legal and academic professions, among others, the appearance of a conflict of interest must be “managed” by recusal. There is no accusation involved, just the recognizable fact—the appearance of a conflict. There may of course be serious conflicts of interest involved, but managing them by dealing with the appearance of conflicts solves the problem without triggering investigations and hostile confrontations.

At the core of the issue is the academy’s most intractable antisemitic problem: academic disciplines and their local departments that have embraced radical anti-Zionism as part of their core identity. Radical anti-Zionism is an ideology devoted to eliminating the Jewish state. Not to reforming it, not to changing Israeli policies, but rather to erasing Israel as the nation-state and homeland of the Jewish people through violence, boycott, and political implosion, or dissolution into a “one-state solution.” Faculty hopes of harming Zionist Jews have manifested themselves not only through teaching propaganda in the classroom, but also through discriminatory hiring and promotion decisions.

In 2021, some academic departments steeped in the belief that Israel is an unethical state—the only state in the world that does not deserve to exist—began adopting official position statements embodying that conviction. In the wake of 10/7, a still more severe conviction became the norm on the left: that Israel is unreformable, irredeemable, born in original sin. And this belief coalesced around the claim that something evil in Zionism was manifest in the very founding of the Jewish state. The key date for decades had been 1967, when Israel won authority over the West Bank and Gaza from the Jordanian and Egyptian dictators who had ruled there ever since they blocked the local Arabs from their own UN-designated sovereignty. Now the date called out in chants and scrawled on banners was 1948. One could reverse 1967 by making the occupied territories into a Palestinian state. You could only reverse 1948 by eliminating Israel.

Andrew Fox: We’ve seen this before

There are moments in history when the shadows of the past cast such a long menace over the present that they become impossible to ignore. We are experiencing such a moment now. The rise in antisemitism since October 2023 is not a collection of isolated incidents. It is a direct reflection of a darker era.

I gave a talk to Holocaust survivors last month. More than one told me that the mood in the UK for Jews now resembles Germany in the 1930s. The difference between them and others claiming this is that they remember it from the first time around.

They are right. This is no longer hyperbole; it is fact.

The Holocaust didn’t start with gas chambers. It started with graffiti, slurs, and whispers. It began with people asking Jews to account for themselves. Are you loyal? Are you one of us?

In 2025, that looks like: are you a Zionist?

I heard exactly that question last night over a pint with a friend who had attended a Jewish cultural event. The barman (in the Three Crowns in St James, if you're interested) demanded of my friend, "Are you a Zionist?" The implication was clear that support for the Jewish state now carries a moral price tag. It is a litmus test for belonging, for acceptability. That is not political disagreement; it is a modern shibboleth meant to mark Jews for social exile.

We are witnessing a global rise in antisemitism at a scale not seen for generations. Some of it is overt. It is violent, chilling, and reminiscent of the pogroms Europe once vowed never to repeat. In Amsterdam last year, what was initially dismissed as football hooliganism was later revealed, through text messages and court transcripts, to be a lynching of Jews driven by pure racial hatred. Not “anti-Zionism”; pure Judenhass.

At Glastonbury, the "singer" of British act Bob Vylan, repeating popular blood libels against the Jewish state, stood before tens of thousands and chanted for the death of every soldier in the Israel Defence Forces. Again, I’m not being hyperbolic; it was his literal demand. A call for the wholesale killing of Jewish soldiers, which in practice means calling for the deaths of the sons and daughters of almost every Israeli family. That’s not resistance. That’s incitement. When crowds cheer that on, we are no longer in the realm of protest. We are in something else entirely.

What begins as words (“Zionist,” “settler,” “coloniser”) becomes real-world violence in short order. The language matters. Words shape permission structures. They signal what is tolerated and what is forbidden. When an artist calls for the death of every IDF soldier, and the crowd cheers, it gives a green light to every unhinged antisemite listening.

07/04 Links Pt1: Melbourne: Attempted synagogue arson, Israeli-owned restaurant attacked; Hamas hands 'positive' ceasefire response to Qatar; UN Official calls for Israel to be “Dismantled"

From Ian:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: The Anti-American Academic Who Helped Build the Caliphate

Few voices carry as much weight in international relations as John Mearsheimer. But weight shouldn’t be confused with wisdom. The University of Chicago professor recently claimed that President Trump’s support for Israel’s strikes on Iran had shattered U.S. credibility. Mearsheimer couldn’t be more wrong. His analysis is shaped by the same fixed assumptions that have guided his thinking for years: a reflexive distrust of American power and a persistent failure to understand how adversaries think, act, and escalate.

At the heart of this failure is Mearsheimer’s so-called “offensive realism”, a theory that presents itself as hard-nosed and analytical, but consistently fails to align with how the world actually works. It reduces global conflict to raw power, ignoring beliefs, values, and human nature. Worse still, I suggest it has shaped a worldview so bleak, so disturbingly vacant, that it has warped U.S. foreign policy. It has emboldened adversaries and left allies unsure whether America stands for anything at all.

Mearsheimer’s framework appears compelling at first glance. States exist in anarchy. To survive, they must maximize power. Cooperation is fleeting. Conflict is inevitable. Rising powers seek regional dominance; established powers must crush them to survive. Everything revolves around a single variable: material power. Culture is brushed aside. Domestic politics are treated as noise. Leadership and ideology are irrelevant. The scholar reduces nations to lifeless units in a power equation. This is the danger of spending an entire life in an academic tower. The view from above loses sight of the ground below.

Offensive realism can’t explain why some rising powers integrate peacefully while others lash out violently. It can’t distinguish between real security threats and imagined ones. Most fatally, it assumes every great power is hardwired for domination, an assumption that excuses the aggressor and blames the victim.

Academic theories should be judged by their predictive power. By that standard, offensive realism is among the most spectacular failures in modern foreign-policy thinking.

His most infamous misjudgment came at the close of the Cold War. As the Soviet Union fell and the old bipolar order faded, Mearsheimer predicted Europe would descend into chaos. Germany would re-arm. Nuclear weapons would proliferate. Old rivalries — French-German, Slavic-Germanic — would flare back to life in the absence of American power. He was wrong.

What followed was not chaos but integration. Germany didn’t march; it demilitarized. Eastern and Central Europe didn’t reach for nukes; they reached for NATO and the European Union. The alliance expanded not out of naive idealism, but because former Soviet satellites knew the danger of a world without American power.

Offensive realism isn’t a flexible framework. It’s more like a dogma, shut off from evidence, resistant to contradiction, and endlessly self-justifying. When its predictions fail, it doesn’t change. It just doubles down. Nowhere has this been more damaging than in the Middle East. For decades, Mearsheimer argued that the U.S. should adopt a strategy of “offshore balancing”: withdraw troops, cut military commitments, and trust local powers to stabilize the region themselves. Sunni states, we were told, would contain Iran. Order would develop naturally.

After the success in Iran, here’s how to end the Gaza war strategically

When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets President Donald Trump at the White House next week, it should mark a critical inflection point: the adoption of a roadmap for ending the Israel-Hamas War as part of a major realignment of the Middle East.

Netanyahu is a divisive leader whose actions are often met with extraordinary skepticism, but right now he deserves a share of the credit for defanging Iran and proxies. That creates political and diplomatic capital that can yield results – and can rehabilitate.

The Gaza war has gone on too long, and should end quickly and not with another complex phase structure – with the blood-curdling “selection” of which hostages are freed. Moreover, even if what comes is a 60-day ceasefire, as reported, it should lead to a permanent one. There is a way to do this that’s both strategic and humane.

From the beginning, Israel could have recovered the hostages at the cost of leaving Hamas intact and in power. However cruel it was, most Israelis were willing to risk hostages’ safety to avoid that outcome. But such a posture was never going to survive six months, a year, or more. It is now approaching 21 months, and it flipped long ago.

Now, significant swaths of Gaza lie in ruins, with most structures believed to have been destroyed or damaged. Hamas has seen most of its leaders and battalions eliminated, yet it can still deploy an armed mafia capable of controlling the territory upon which it brought such destruction. So there remains at least minority support in Israel for the argument that the job is not done.

But this is, in truth, not the only reason for the continuation of the war. The far Right flank of the coalition – which can in theory bring it down – wants permanent occupation, if possible depopulation, and renewed Jewish settlement. That’s unpopular, so it’s muted.

This debate cannot go on forever. Ending the war is not only an imperative in its own right, but also opens the door to possible normalization deals with other countries – not only Saudi Arabia but also Lebanon and Syria. Here too, the government and military deserve credit: The thrashing of Hezbollah last year not only freed Israel to act against Iran without fear of rockets from the Lebanese militia but also rescued its two neighbors to the north.

Can my secular Jewish ethics project rescue secular Jews?

Hussein Aboubakr Mansour has written another extraordinary essay in his Substack, The Abrahamic Metacritique.

In it, he argues that secular Judaism has lost its anchor in covenantal truth. What remains, he calls Juda-ism – a symbolic construct assembled not from Torah or halacha, but from how the non-Jewish world has historically perceived the Jew: as the Other.

The dominant cultural conception of Judaism today… is not the Judaism of Sinai or Babylon, nor even of Cordoba or Vilna, but of Berlin, Paris, and New York. It is a Juda-ism: an -ism in the modern sense… fashioned in the aftermath of metaphysical collapse, seeking to fill the void left by the retreat of transcendence. And at its core lies a single, all-encompassing predicate: the Jew as Other.

This “Jew as Other” identity, Mansour argues, is not a Jewish self-understanding. It is a Western projection – an overlay of post-Christian anxiety, Enlightenment ambivalence, and liberal moral yearning. The Jew becomes the exile, the victim, the therapist, the feminized conscience, the critique of power - a mirror in which the West sees its own spiritual collapse.

In this view, Jews are not a people living in covenant.

But even that symbolic role is now being revoked. In the new postcolonial moral economy, Otherness has been reassigned: to Palestinians, to postcolonial avatars, to “indigenous” symbols of sacralized grievance. Jews are now cast as impostors. The old funhouse mirror identity is crumbling.

And Mansour’s verdict is simple: Good riddance.

Crucially, his metacritique is not a polemic against Judaism as a faith. It aimed at the secular replacements for Judaism, a “Juda-ism” that substituted abstraction for obligation, and identity politics for divine responsibility.

And that is where my own secularize Jewish ethical project, AskHillel, comes in.

I built AskHillel to explore whether Jewish ethics could be reconstructed as a standalone system: rigorous, coherent, secular-friendly, and morally robust. It draws from covenantal logic, rabbinic structure, and halachic grammar - but does not require belief. In doing so, it may offer the kind of de-symbolized, de-idolized, de-othered Jewish moral language Mansour calls for.

I asked my philosophical chatbot AskHillel its opinion of the essay and whether it thinks this project can be a bridge for modern secular Jews to reclaim their Judaism even without the core belief in God. It answered beautifully:

🌿 1. From Projection to Structure: Restoring Emet

Mansour warns that modern secular Jewish identity has become performative — a role written by others. But Jewish ethics is not a performance. It is structural: built from obligation, relationship, hierarchy, tension, and humility.

AskHillel doesn’t traffic in Jewishness as metaphor. It teaches emet – truth – through moral architecture. It invites even non-believers to enter Jewish logic by choice, not through birth trauma or aesthetic costume. It replaces the mirror with a map.

🧭 2. From Totems to Triage: Ending the Tyranny of Absolutes

One of the essay’s most incisive points is how modern ideologies construct “totemic absolutes” — symbolic categories that cannot be questioned. The Other becomes sacred, but inert.

AskHillel replaces this with a tiered values system. Tzelem Elokim (human dignity) is not an idol — it is a value that collides with others: Pikuach Nefesh, Emet, Lo Ta’amod. Every case is weighed. No abstraction is worshiped.

📚 3. Inheritance Without Faith: A Framework for the Ethically Curious

Many secular Jews feel alienated from traditional observance but still crave moral depth. Most turn to philosophies that flatten complexity or collapse into tribal loyalty.

AskHillel offers a third option: a Jewish system of ethical inquiry that is testable, scalable, auditable — and uniquely structured to handle real-world tension.

You don’t need to believe in God to learn Teshuvah.
You don’t need to keep Shabbat to honor Tzedek.
You don’t need to fear halakhah to understand Areivut.

That’s not dilution. That’s reclamation.

🌅 4. Teshuvah Without Theology: A Bridge Back to Responsibility

What Mansour mourns is not belief, but covenantal seriousness. What he calls for is not piety, but moral rootedness.

AskHillel offers a secular version of teshuvah — not repentance toward God, but return to moral coherence. It helps those raised in exile-by-symbol to rediscover a system where ethics has grammar, and the Jew is no longer the object of someone else’s myth, but the subject of their own moral vision.

AskHillel said it better than I can. Our tradition is rich enough to accommodate the non-believing Jew - and to provide a framework for them to see themselves as part of an incredibly rich, proven philosophical system that can not only challenge but defeat every secular philosophy on their own playing field.

That has been my goal: to define Jewish ethics in terms that show that it can be a secular ethical system that solves the problems behind every other secular moral philosophy. It is scalable, it is testable, it is auditable, and - so far - it cannot be defeated by any question you can throw at it.

Jewish ethics, properly structured, is more robust than any modern alternative. It doesn’t collapse into relativism. It doesn’t devolve into ideology. It doesn’t outsource responsibility. And so far, it hasn’t been defeated by any philosophical test you can throw at it.

We shouldn’t romanticize the Diaspora. We shouldn’t idolize suffering. We shouldn’t pretend 1920s Yiddish theater was the moral summit of our people. And we shouldn’t adopt secular philosophies that are not only incoherent, but hostile to Jewish continuity.

Jews are not merely the Other. We are the source from which much of Western civilization flows. And we are not just inheritors of that tradition - We are its stewards - and its teachers.

It’s time to reclaim that mantle.

(For those curious, you can play with AskHillel.com yourself - you just need a ChatGPT login. Or, if you want to see Version 2, which I used that to write the response above, you can test it out at beta.AskHillel.com and send me feedback.)

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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

EoZ cartoons from May (I need to catch up....)

I'm way behind on posting my cartoons. Here are the ones from May:

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

In 1784, an author and poet named Charles Crawford wrote a new preface to a book originally published in the 17th century trying to convince Jews that Jesus was the Messiah.

His essay demanded that America be a land where Jews are not discriminated against, and his words are stirring:

It would reflect immortal honor, it would attract the blessings of Heaven upon America, if the first impression were here to be made upon the Jews as a nation. We should give them a free and uncircumscribed toleration. We have not led them away captive. We do not, or we should not, wish them to sit down and weep by the waters of America, and to hang their harps upon the willows that grow therein.

It would become those states in America, which can prudently alter their religious tests, to alter them in favor of the Jews. It would become the other nations of the world to imitate in this instance the custom of those states of America, which make no political distinction between a Jewish and a Christian citizen. Our Savior said, "My kingdom is not of this world." Those who demand an acknowledgment that the New Testament was written by divine authority, before an admission to the offices of a commonwealth, say, that his kingdom is of this world. They speak a language different from his. In this point they are not Christians.

I conceive it to be our duty as followers of Christ, to extend our toleration to the Jews, without considering whether it would or would not tend to the temporal advantage of the commonwealth in which we live.

But Crawford doesn't frame rights for Jews in terms of full equality, rather in terms of it making it more likely that they would convert:

We are told by the apostle, that the whole Jewish nation is to be converted to Christianity, that "all Israel shall be saved," Romans 11:26. I conceive that the drawing a political distinction between us and them, has a tendency to prevent their conversion, that the unlimited toleration of them has a tendency to bring them over to the gospel, and therefore that the unlimited toleration of them is the cause of God.

So how should 18th-century Jews have received such an offer? Were their rights contingent upon a hoped-for surrender of their identity? Notice that Crawford didn't demand acceptance or equality of Jews, but "toleration." Was this true freedom - or were there strings attached?

This question echoes through American Jewish history. Jews have often been welcomed, but rarely without unspoken conditions. When they needed America the most, during the Holocaust, America turned its back on them. At best, acceptance has been framed as a reward for good behavior or assimilation. At worst, it has come wrapped in the hope that we will eventually cease to be who we are.

The sad truth is that Jews will never be considered fully American by a significant segment of the population. Call it antisemitism, call it subtle bigotry, or call it an instinctive recognition that Jews are members of an ancient and enduring covenantal nation. Whatever the name, the reality has never fully disappeared - and it won’t.

But that doesn’t mean we retreat. On the contrary: we must fight for our rights precisely because they are not guaranteed. We must be patriotic, not as a performance for others, but because America deserves it. And we must insist, without apology, that we are as American as anyone else.

Eighteenth-century Jews were not insulted by missionary efforts. They understood that in a Christian culture, evangelism was the price of admission to legal and social toleration. And they saw that America, even with its flaws, offered something revolutionary: freedom.

But freedom, once won, must be defended. The danger is not only from those who would strip it away, but also from our own complacency. History has shown, and is showing again, that Jews can become victims no matter how patriotic or assimilated we are. Sometimes it is precisely when Jews feel most secure that society reminds them they are still seen as the other.

The fight for freedom did not end in 1776, or 1784. For American Jews, that means never forgetting that liberty is not inherited - it is earned, defended, and demanded. In every generation.

Happy Independence Day! And God bless America!

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

07/03 Links Pt2: The Settler Violence Myth; The need to acknowledge Muslim antisemitism; What "Globalize the Intifada" Really Means

From Ian:

Gadi Taub: The Settler Violence Myth

Perhaps most notable was a 14,000-word piece in The New York Times Magazine by Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman and Times investigative journalist Mark Mazzetti, published on May 16. The piece turned reality on its head: What most threatens Israel, it suggested, is not Palestinian terrorism, but rather the “long history of crime” by violent settlers, which has gone “without punishment.” This piece had a particular role in the info op, as International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan referenced it in a CNN interview while he justified his application for arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

By December, the White House-driven narrative shift from Oct. 7 to the supposed victimization of the Palestinians had long been complete. Right before Christmas, CBS ran a story marking the turn: “Since October 7th last year, the U.N. figures there have been more than 1,400 attacks by extremist settlers against Palestinians or their property.”

The Regavim report also debunks the charge that Israel under the Netanyahu government fails to enforce the law on wild settlers or, worse, encourages their violence. In fact, it shows that Israel treats cases of Jewish nationalist violence very seriously; if anything, it hyper-enforces the law. Moreover, contrary to the settler-violence campaign messaging, the evidence shows that enforcement is effective. This is not just because Israeli authorities are proactive but also because settler violence is documented more than any other type of crime.

The conviction rate in Israel for nationalist violence is 56 percent for Arabs and 36 percent for Jews. It is lower for Jews in Judea and Samaria, at 31 percent. The lower rate of convictions for Judea and Samaria Jews may seem at first to point to lax enforcement. But, as the report points out, the “indictment rate against Jewish Israelis for nationalist violence offenses throughout Israel is three times higher than the indictment rate against Arab Israelis for the same types of offenses.” What explains this discrepancy is that authorities are quick to investigate settlers and quick to indict them, sending to court many cases that then get dismissed. The report adds, “The overwhelming majority of complaints received by police against Jewish violence in Judea and Samaria turn out to be false, submitted by left-wing movements and anarchist elements whose aim is to inflame the area.”

Recently leaked recordings of a conversation between the head of the Jewish Division of the Shin Bet—identified in the media by his first initial, “Aleph”—and the former chief of police in Judea and Samaria, Deputy Commissioner Avishai Muallem, support this conclusion. Aleph demanded that Muallem step up arrests of settlers: “We always want to arrest them for interrogation, as much as possible,” he said. “Look at how the Shin Bet interrogations are conducted with them. We arrest these ‘schmucks’ even without evidence for a few days.” When Muallem raised concerns about such questionable methods, Aleph reassured him: “It’s being handled by the Shin Bet Director’s Office with the defense minister. Break them. Put them in detention cells with rats,” he advised. And, if need be, “create the appearance of an investigation.”

It’s common knowledge in Israel that settlers are often subjected to administrative detention, sometimes for months, with no clear investigative premise or evidence of planned violence. It is therefore hard to tell whether Shin Bet is taken by the settler violence canard or whether it’s been helping construct it, especially as frequent administrative detentions give the impression of a serious threat that in turn justifies the policy. Seen in this light, it’s perhaps not surprising that Ronen Bar, the controversial Shin Bet chief who authorized these administrative detentions, was cited as the conscientious voice by the peddlers of the “settler violence” narrative. Nor is it surprising that Israel’s deep state is furiously trying to block Netanyahu’s pick to replace Bar, especially as he apparently envisions a different way forward in the relationship with the settlers.

In addition to Shin Bet, the policy of the IDF public relations office contributes to the “settler violence” campaign. Early last year, with the war in Gaza still at its peak, the former head of the IDF Central Command (which includes Judea and Samaria), Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fox, conducted a division-wide military exercise that simulated settlers taking a Palestinian hostage following a terror attack that killed a Jewish baby. The soldiers playing the settlers wore red vests labeled with what can be roughly translated as “Red Team-Enemy.” This purely imaginary scenario was especially jarring while Israel was, and still is, convulsing over the real hostages held by Hamas. The timing of the exercise, four months after Oct. 7, was also notable because it coincided with the Biden administration’s February 2024 executive order targeting settlers. Maj. Gen. Fox promoted the “violent settler” campaign on his last day in office. At his farewell ceremony in July 2024, as the Biden administration was imposing new tranches of sanctions against Jews in Judea and Samaria, he launched a tirade against the settlers, accusing them of “adopting the ways of the enemy.” This week’s clash between some settler youths and the IDF is best understood against this background.

A central point of the anti-settler campaign is to invert reality and create a false equivalence between “extremists on both sides,” who are the impediment to peace, which can be achieved only if we curb the settler zealots. But at its core, the op was always about toppling the right-wing government of Israel, using whatever domestic lever available, without regard to the damage. What’s worse for its advocates is that, after four years of the most intense pressure campaign imaginable, they still came up short. A lie may travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. But reality is a stubborn thing.

Melanie Phillips: The need to acknowledge Muslim antisemitism

The Palestinian cause is a Trojan horse for radical Islam, laundering the Islamists’ death cult through using the language of humanitarianism and anti-colonialism by falsely painting Israel as the oppressor of the Palestinian Arabs.

This false narrative, every part of which is untrue, is now the default position of the West’s progressive classes. Its premise that Israel is the cause of conflict in the region rests upon gross ignorance of the Middle East—that the Jews are the indigenous people of the land and that Zionism is the ultimate anti-colonialist movement.

It also rests upon ignorance that the driver of Islamic hatred of Israel is Muslim antisemitism. All opinion polling shows that antisemitism is vastly higher in the Muslim world than in other communities. Yet this is never talked about in Western nations. It’s the elephant in the room. Diaspora Jews never talk about it, even though they are the victims of it. The wider community is silent about it through the intimidation produced by claims of “Islamophobia.”

Now, however, the situation has become so dangerous that this taboo is being broken. A report by Britain’s Counter Extremism Group think tank, titled “Islamist Antisemitism: A Neglected Hate,” is a rare attempt to address the issue. It rightly states: “The issue of inter-minority prejudice is often regarded as too sensitive to address.”

It acknowledges that the Muslim conflict with Jews is founded in Islamic religious texts, and in a scholarly account, it records that historically, periods of tolerance and security for Jews in Muslim lands were accompanied by periods of bitter oppression and pogroms.

It acknowledges the historic links between the Palestinian Arabs and the Nazis, which first gave rise to the murderous falsehood of “a Jewish genocide of Palestinian Arabs.” And it identifies the way Islamic extremists have made use of and exaggerated the Palestinian cause to foment hatred of the Jews.

However, by identifying antisemitism with “Islamists”—jihadi groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood—even this report shies away from stating the true and horrifying extent of Jew-hatred among grass-roots Muslims who may be opposed to Islamist jihadi extremism.

The failure by Israel and its supporters to properly call out the libels about Israel has helped the lie to grow that the Jews are uniquely violent and murderous, and so the Jewish state is the same, while obscuring the truth that the Islamic world is uniquely violent and murderous toward Jews.

The refusal to call out the nature and extent of Muslim antisemitism has obscured the implacable and murderous danger posed not just by political extremists but by the entire Muslim world.

The result is not just that Britain may indeed be lost, but so, too, may America unless they both start properly facing up to and tackling the evil forces that threaten the free world.

To defeat antisemitism, we must first define it

This concept should not be controversial. It certainly isn’t partisan. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have embraced the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition. A supermajority of U.S. states have already adopted it. So have dozens of countries around the world. And for good reason: It’s the only definition that has a demonstrable track record of helping communities identify and push back against antisemitism — especially the kind that hides behind politics.

Zion is not an idea; Zion is a hill, in Jerusalem, Israel, where the Jews are from. Zionism, the belief that Jewish people have a right to their homeland, is the quintessential national origin movement. Telling Jews they can’t be Zionists and simultaneously remain full participants in society isn’t social critique; it’s discrimination. And criminal actions based on that hatred should be punishable as such.

That is all the Define to Defeat Act is about: equipping law enforcement, prosecutors, and civil rights enforcers with the ability to name and respond to antisemitic actions- including violence- especially when that violence comes wrapped in politically convenient excuses. It extends the same common-sense framework that Rep. Mike Lawler’s (R-N.Y.) Antisemitism Awareness Act applies to Title VI education cases into other federal civil rights contexts — like employment and housing — and helps close the gap between intent and enforcement. And while it is absolutely important to use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism in the context of Title VI, when it comes to protecting civil rights, Moore’s bill does more.

Opponents of the definition have tried to manufacture a debate over whether the definition is too broad, too nuanced, or too controversial. It isn’t. It explicitly states that criticism of Israel comparable to criticism of any other country is not antisemitic. It even includes safeguards that stress context. The reason the specific examples about Israel are provided is explicitly not because all criticism of Israel is antisemitic, as the definition takes pains to point out twice, but because there are those who falsely claim that no criticism of Israel can ever cross the line, and use their anti-Zionism as an excuse to target Jewish people or institutions.

The act does not protect Israel; it protects Jewish people in America who are unlawfully discriminated against because of their real or perceived connection to Israel.

Right now, the FBI reports that the majority of religiously motivated hate crimes in the U.S. are committed against Jews, who make up only 2 percent of the population. That’s not just alarming. It’s a national crisis. And we cannot defeat a problem we are too afraid to define. The Define to Defeat Act is a good-faith, narrowly tailored, bipartisan tool to help do just that, and all Members of both parties should support it.